Super-Resolution Technology Makes Film-Industry Debut

Super-Resolution Technology Makes Film-Industry Debut

Topaz Labs partners with movie 'Sounds' to premiere never-before-seen enhanced resolution process at WorldFest International Film Festival

DALLAS, April 4, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- Topaz Labs LLC announced today that it has joined in a partnership with independent feature film Sounds to demonstrate its Super-Resolution Technology previously unheard of in the film industry.

This partnership means that Sounds, produced and directed by Ryan Humphries of Grass Valley, Calif., will make history as the first feature-length movie utilizing Super-Resolution Technology.

The film will premiere the Super-Resolution Technology at the 2008 WorldFest International Film Festival (http://www.worldfest.org/) in Houston, Texas. Now in its 41st year, the WorldFest selection panel nominated Sounds for the prestigious Remi Award. Past recipients of this award include Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, The Coen Brothers and dozens of other Hollywood legends. Sounds screens at 9:30 p.m., April 14, at Houston's AMC Studio 30 Dunvale Theater, the festival's main venue.

Until now, SRT has primarily been used by spy satellites, the military, the CIA, a few high-tech forensic labs and U.S. law enforcement agencies. Topaz Labs will be the first to develop and introduce Super-Resolution Technology (SRT) to the film industry.

Humphries will be consulting with Topaz, lending his creative expertise in the development of this ground-breaking technology for use by video and film producers worldwide.

"We are thrilled to be partnering with Ryan and his team to be the first to bring super-resolution video enhancement technology to the film market," said Dr. Feng Yang, founder of Topaz Labs and holder of five U.S. patents in video and audio enhancement technology.

Topaz Labs is a technology and software company that carefully researched and designed unique ways to improve video quality. The result is a series of proprietary video enhancement algorithms based on "Super-Resolution" technology. Radically more effective than typical scaling-based editing programs using so-called video enhancement features, this revolutionary technology carefully extracts image information from multiple adjacent video frames and combines them to re-synthesize video signals at much higher resolutions.

With the sci-fi comedy Sounds, Topaz has developed sophisticated SRT software that gives producers of independent films the ability to enhance the resolution of any finished movie.

The SRT software from Topaz empowers producers to bump-up their standard definition shot film to hi-def, or even hi-def to digital film of 4,000 pixels. SRT similarly parallels the difference in quality Blu-ray has achieved over standard DVD and compliments Blu-ray in a number of ways, providing greater marketing and revenue possibilities for film producers worldwide.

"If you shot a movie in standard definition, which is generally 720 x 480, you can process it with our SRT software and the finished product is a high-definition quality 1920 x 1080 version of the movie," Yang said. "There are a lot of TV shows that were shot in film and can now, with Super-Resolution Technology, be made to have much better image quality."

As an independent film producer, Humphries is very impressed with SRT's quality.

"The discovery of true SRT from Topaz is exactly what I and other filmmakers need," Humphries said. "The term Super-Resolution Technology has been used before to describe the process of interpolating and smoothing pixels during image enlargement, which isn't super-resolution at all. This technology uses a new approach to achieve super-resolution enhancement."

The new, super-resolution software is expected to become available to the film industry this summer (2008). However, an innovative before-and-after demonstration of this technology from the movie Sounds can be viewed at http://www.soundsthemovie.com/srtdemo.htm. For more information on SRT, visit http://www.topazlabs.com/.

About Topaz Labs

Topaz Labs LLC, a privately owned company in Dallas, Texas, focuses on developing advanced video and image enhancement technologies. Topaz Labs' mission is to bring state-of-the-art image and video enhancement technologies to graphic and video professionals and consumers alike.

About Sounds

Sounds is a fictional sci-fi thriller-comedy that pokes fun at cinematic drama. Writer/Director Ryan Humphries combines two entertaining elements: Sci-Fi eeriness and comedic timing in this spoof about FBI agents on their biggest case ever. Executive Producer Robert Lenney is preparing to seek distribution for Sounds as he gears up for the film festival circuit.

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact:

Source: Sounds

CONTACT: Robert Lenney, +1-916-778-8777, Rob@soundsthemovie.com, or
Keith Turner, +1-530-368-0909, Keith@soundsthemovie.com, both for Sounds

Web site: http://www.soundsthemovie.com/
http://www.worldfest.org/
http://www.topazlabs.com/

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Profile: International Entertainment